Alain de Botton Quotes, Thinking Quotes, People Quotes

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , People Quotes

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love And Friendship Quotes , And Love Quotes

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sex Quotes , Believe Quotes

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sex Quotes , Suggestions Quotes

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes

It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Eye Quotes , Our World Quotes

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Humanity Quotes , Looks Quotes

As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hurt Quotes , Light Quotes

It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Self Hatred Quotes

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Disrespect Quotes

It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ordinary Quotes , Example Quotes

Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Falling In Love Quotes , Elude Us Quotes

What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Numbers Quotes , People Quotes

I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Pieces Quotes

Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Revenge Quotes , Intelligent Quotes

It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Life Quotes , Dust Quotes

Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , God Love Quotes

What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Tiny Quotes , Disappointing Quotes

We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Envy Quotes , Groups Quotes

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Essence Quotes , Alive Quotes